Sony, rootkits and DRM gone too far

Mark at Sysinternals has done a lot of work on rootkits, which are now used by malware writers to cloak their misdeeds. Checking his own hard drive, he was shocked to find he had one. His blog explains how he found out what it did and where it came from: "Sony BMG's Get Right with the Man (the name is ironic under the circumstances) CD by the Van Zant brothers." The problem was that removing the rootkit also removed his CD drive from Windows. He writes:

The entire experience was frustrating and irritating. Not only had Sony put software on my system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall. Worse, most users that stumble across the cloaked files with a RKR scan will cripple their computer if they attempt the obvious step of deleting the cloaked files.

While I believe in the media industry's right to use copy protection mechanisms to prevent illegal copying, I don't think that we've found the right balance of fair use and copy protection, yet. This is a clear case of Sony taking DRM too far.